


Blessing

by CastellanKurze (Kuja083), starcunning (Vannevar)



Series: Wolf and Doe [2]
Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Deathwatch - Freeform, Evangeline Khione, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Sister of Battle, Space Marines, Torin Firemane, Wolf and Doe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-10 02:40:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1153789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kuja083/pseuds/CastellanKurze, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vannevar/pseuds/starcunning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some wounds are not taken on the body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blessing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CastellanKurze (Kuja083)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kuja083/gifts).



Most days, the Imperial Bastion at Kienda on the world of Vengeance operated in a state of organized chaos. Then there were the days “organized” was thrown to the wind entirely, and this day had been of that sort, beginning at dawn with the injured cohort of the Antietian First shipped back to the field hospital that Evangeline Khione claimed at her post.  
Canoness Justitia had blamed the Flesh Tearers, of course, and most of Evangeline’s sisters and Apothecary Martel of the Adeptus Astartes Deathwatch had left the Bastion shortly after daybreak. That had left the medicae short-handed, even with the Guard reserves. Evangeline had spent the morning in surgery with one of the Scintillans injured in the Gunmetal Slugs’ last excursion; she had glimpsed Martel’s distinctive black-and-white heraldry around noon, but had seen nothing of him thereafter.  
But she didn’t see any familiar faces either: no Argent Shroud, no Deathwatch, and she counted herself glad when her shift was ended and she scrubbed the blood from her gloved hands.

So many bodies beneath the steely clouds, and all of them with bloodied hands, she couldn’t help thinking. Torin Firemane was well, she assured herself as she made for his quarters. Konrad Martel was better equipped to handle his injuries than she in any case, and he had not made mention of the Space Wolf to her at noontime.  
Then again, Konrad Martel rarely made mention of anything to her. Nor did he fraternize overmuch with Doc Larcher and the other Guard adjutants, the men and women Evangeline had come to consider friends or at least comrades over the last few months in the hospital, Ecclesial divisions be damned.

She punched the keys and found a room silent and empty, the reek of repair cement heavy upon the air, black and silver armor racked in one corner. The Shadowclaw hung inert at the suit’s right hand, its tines retracted and inert, its wreathes of lightning curious in its absence. As Torin was curious in his. The Sororita went first to the main hall and found nine new hashmarks—nine of the old foe felled today—but no Space Wolves, and so she left the warmth of the Bastion’s halls again.

The sky was threatening rain by then, the setting sun obscured by dark clouds. She thought she heard thunder for a moment before she realized it was the thud of Valhallan artillery. And beneath it something else, persistent, but Commissar Faulkner usually drilled at dawn.  
Nevertheless Evangeline set off toward the bulky silhouettes of Metallican tanks. She dared not walk between them and surprise whoever was at drill—though Evangeline doubted inwardly he would ever fail to hear her coming—and instead strode into the teeth of the oncoming storm, the wind that heralded it threatening to tear her Hospitaler’s veil from her head.

It was not the first time she had come upon him in the throes of his drill, Evangeline had to admit. No, that had been another piste, another weapon—the black-clad Shadowclaw, new to the Wolf’s service—but the sight of the Astartes in motion never failed to stop Evangeline Khione’s breath in her throat. There was an enviable fluidity in the motions as he slashed and feinted, whirling, his bare feet shuffling upon the asphalt. Evangeline had been trained in the use of the chainsword. She had also been taught to dance.  
Her skill in both of these arenas fell well short of the Wolf’s own prowess, she had realized. No man so large should have been able to move so quickly nor with such grace.  
Torin Firemane’s hair was unbound, barely matted to his brow by the beginnings of sweat as he continued through the drill, his chest begun to heave, betraying the length of his practice.  
The silence was deafening as the teeth of the chainsword stilled and he brought it to rest at last, its tip against the earth, his head bowed. The storm filled it a moment later with a roll of thunder, and with no more warning than that, the sky opened up. Thick, fat drops of rain fell to spatter indiscriminately on tarmac, ceramite armor plating, the imposing edifice of the Bastion—and on all the servants of the Imperium and traitors to the Emperor’s name still caught under the steely skies.

“Torin?” the Sororita said at length, an edge of concern in her tone.  
“Evangeline,” he replied, his voice barely audible over the rainfall. His hair had deepened to a rusty shade as the rain plastered to his shoulders and chest, the Wolf clad only in a black undershirt. He lifted his head, his eyes closed, and let the rain fall upon his face.  
“It’s raining,” Evangeline informed him softly, reaching up to peel her veil away from her cheeks, though it fell against her pale skin and stuck once more. Her white gown had gone translucent in the rainfall, revealing the grey shift beneath and betraying the shape of her crinoline and support garments of her skirts.  
“Aye, so it is,” the Wolf replied, beckoning her nearer.  
“You’ll catch a cold,” Evie told him. The Wolf cracked one green eye to meet her own gaze. “ _I’ll_  catch a cold,” she amended.  
He should have smiled at that, but his features were still. He touched her chin, gently, so gently, and then slipped an arm around the narrowness of her shoulders, pulling her into his shadow as though to shield her from the rain. “Come back with me then,” he said, shaking out his damp mane.  
“Alright,” Evangeline assented, and he drew back a step, sheathing the chainsword upon his back. She took his hand, and let him lead her back to the Bastion, the pair leaving damp footprints the whole way back to his quarters.

He ushered her in before him, and the Hospitaler paused to peel off her veil, revealing the sodden blonde hair beneath. “What’s wrong?” she asked him then, shivering.  
He set his chainsword aside then and pulled the Sororita into his arms, his head bowed to kiss the crown of her braided hair. “No words yet,” he told her. “Give me this, first.”  
“Of course,” Evangeline said, wrapping her arms around the Skyclaw’s bulk. She stroked his back then, like a child, while he held her and shivered. She suspected it had nothing to do with the cold, with the rain. He pawed at her hair in turn, all but squeezing the breath from her lungs before he let her go and turned away to strip off his shirt.  
She does much the same, peeling out of the layers of white linen that cling to her, laying them over a chair. With anyone else she’d have been shy, nervous of her immodesty, but the Wolf had seen more of her than this long since, and she had the sense his usual instincts were far from his mind now. She crossed to him, kissing at his bare back, careful of the carapace plugs sunk into his flesh at regular intervals. All of Torin’s scars were on his front, she noted as she breathed in. The wolf’s musky scent was buried under some chemical reek she didn’t recognize.  
“It was a very long day,” the Space Wolf said some moments later, turning to face her. He smiled humorlessly.  
She smiled back, though the expression on her face was of better cheer: a little hopeful, encouraging, even. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked then, hesitance in her tone.  
“Not yet,” he told her.  
“Do you want me to draw a bath?” she asked then. He regarded her a moment, service stud glinting as he lofted a brow, and then he nodded.

The bath was as brutal and utilitarian as most of the Bastion—no time for the usual Imperial grandeur, it had been erected in a hurry shortly after the Wolf’s kill-team had made planetfall. That had been months before Evangeline’s master, Markayus Baldwin of the Ordos Hereticus Lentulus, had brought the Argent Shroud to Vengeance. She and her sisters had come to prosecute the Tau who had laid siege to this world, rightly of the Imperium.  
Not a day after their arrival, the deplorable traitors who had called themselves Word Bearers had appeared in orbit, through livid violet wounds in the sky visible even from the surface. The nature of their war had changed then. Inquisitor Dostoyevsky had been glad when the Flesh Tearers had arrived to reinforce his Deathwatch.  
Evangeline had been less sure.

Torin seemed as lost in his own thoughts as he stripped away his clothing and sank into the heated water. Evangeline, too, stripped most of her garb away, but for her white corset and silken stockings, still dry despite the penetrating rainfall. Wreathed in steam, looking down upon the reclining Space Wolf, she finally stopped shivering.  
Evangeline seated herself behind Torin’s head, her fingers combing through his namesake locks. His eyes were closed, his brows still knit.  
“The good,” he said at last. “Two champions of the dark powers felled, and with them a handful of their legion.”  
“Nine new hashmarks,” Evie nodded, reaching down over him to sluice water over his reclining form. “I saw.” She smiled then. “Two champions at the Antietian post?” she wondered then, a crease appearing upon her pretty face.  
“One there,” he agreed. “Another, the sorcerer, elsewhere.”  
“I thought you were dealing with the heretical Flesh Tearers this morning,” Evangeline murmured. “Canoness Justitia seemed to think they were to blame for the soldiers sent to me this morning. She seemed satisfied enough at vespers.”  
“Aye, there was that,” he sighed, lifting a hand trailing beads of water to brush his hair back, looking up at her. “Allfather forgive me, it  _has_  been a long day.” He let out another grunt of displeasure, shifting in the water to sit up slightly. “Suffice t’say the Flesh Teaeers are innocent of that crime. T’was the work of the foe, attempting to sow dissent between us. We saw to it the true perpetrators of the crime were dealt with,” he told her.  
“The sorcerer and the other one?” Evangeline wanted to know then, reaching for a small pitcher and filling it with bathwater which she poured over the Wolf’s head in an almost baptismal fashion, her hands smoothing back his hair. Rivulets of water ran down her arms to fall from her elbows.  
“Aye,” he agreed, his muscles twitching with the impulse to shake his hair out. “The Word Bearers and their lapdogs were t’blame.”  
“But if you rooted out the heresy and slew two of the champions, you should be gladder,” she said, teasing it out of him.  
He fell back upon the edge of the tub then, those green eyes looking up at her. “That’s what everyone thinks, aye?” he prompted. “That so goes the life of a warrior. If you win, you’re happy you’ve won. If you lose, you’re dead.” He huffed then, somewhere between a snort and a laugh, then shook his head.  
“Oh,” said the Sister then, her lips pursed. She reached past him for one of the philtres laid out beside the bath. He caught her hand in one of his own, his massive fingers enfolding her delicately.  
“Forgive me, Evangeline,” he said then. “I mean no insult.” After a moment he let her go, and she poured a measure of shampoo into her hands, beginning to work it into the Wolf’s mane.  
“It just seems like a major victory to me,” she pointed out. “And none of you came in injured. But with Father Baptiste and Lord Martel with you, I suppose you wouldn’t have to.” She ducked her head and kissed at the breadth of one shoulder. He still didn’t smell quite like himself. “I’m trying to understand,” she sighed, rinsing his hair. The froth of foam floated upon the turbid waters, dissipating like prayer incense.  
“The sorcerer … drowned us in illusions,” Torin said then, his eyes closing, his expression tormented. “He separated us from one another and played upon our weaknesses.”  
The crease in Evangeline’s brow reappeared, deeper still, and her blue eyes grew as stormy as the night sky outside. “Foul psyker tricks,” she spat under her breath.  
“He showed me …” Torin continued, and she reached for him again, cupping that broad face in her delicate hands. “A vision of this city ruined, brought to heel beneath the Word Bearers. He showed me a future where my own battle-brother turned upon me.” The Wolf made to speak again, but fell silent. Evangeline leaned over him, and kissed his brow.  
“Have the others thought about coming to the medicae?” Evangeline asked then. “Or to a confessor?”  
“Inquisitor Baldwin probed our minds when we got back,” Torin told her. “At our request. He declared us free of taint,” he continued, his tone clearly one of reassurance, though Evangeline wasn’t sure who it was meant for.  
“That doesn’t mean you feel alright about it,” she told him. He laughed once, softly, pushing himself into an upright sitting position and then out of the bath to loom over her sitting form.  
“No,” he agreed as he toweled off, “it doesn’t. Baptiste stayed with Baldwin. I think Lisenne went to Inquisitor Dostoyevsky after Ceallach and I left him.”

Maybe another night she’d have been nettled that he still called the Commissar by her forename. Evangeline wasn’t fool enough to have missed the history between the pair, but this wasn’t the night to make issue of it. Instead, Evangeline stood and anointed the Space Wolf in oils and unguents, massaging his muscles, still so fraught with tension.  
“You’re afraid,” she murmured. The oils smelled of rosewood and amber. This was the Wolf she knew.  
He took a deep breath. “I am Astartes,” he finally said softly. “I am not to know fear.”  
“You told me yourself the first night we met, ‘Courage is not the absence of fear but the overcoming of it,’” Evangeline reminded him, scraping the oil and water gently from his scarred skin. He glanced back at her.  
“One of the visions shown to me was the Hall of Battles on Fenris,” he told her, letting her ladylike hands move over his body. “It is the archive of my chapter. I saw myself searching for my name among the records. I found it in the book of the infamous, with tales of …” the Wolf trailed off then, his gaze downcast. He shook his head. “Tales of atrocity committed in the name of victory, and still the greater part of the foe escaped me.” Another sigh swelled the Astartes’ form, leaving him deflated in its wake. “I am shamed to tell ye it is not unknown in the history of the Astartes, and might I live a hundred thousand lifetimes I would dread such a fate.”

She nodded gently, reaching up to run her hands through his hair. At a gesture, the Wolf knelt at her feet, and she stood behind him.  
“There’s more you’re keeping back,” she sensed, her deft fingers already begun to section out his damp locks.  
“Aye,” he admitted, lifting a hand to his brow. Gently she pulled it away, giving his fingers a light squeeze, and as she began to braid his hair, Torin spoke. “When we were all together again, when we thought the foe bested, we thought we were free to go. We left together, and emerged into a street. The gutters ran with blood, and the Word Bearers were not far. And then, one by one—Lisenne first, then Ceallach—each of th’men and women I trusted went to stand with the foe.” Torin frowned, and Evangeline left off her work a long moment to wrap her arms around him from behind, pulling him back into a loose hug, her cheek pressed against his own, the stubble of his coarse beard scratching against the fleur-de-lys inked upon her flesh. “Octavian Suntalon was with ‘em already.”  
“The Grey Knight?” Evangeline wondered. “Inquisitor Grendel’s _Grey Knight?_ ”  
“Aye,” Torin confirmed.  
“Impossible,” the Sororita breathed. “Another psyker’s trick, another seed of dissent.”  
“Aye, Evangeline, I know,” Torin murmured, but he didn’t sound convinced.  
She straightened, then, tying off his braids, and pulled him to his feet. Torin Firemane looked more like himself, though his smiles were still hard in coming. Evangeline reached up to touch his face, as though to ease the seriousness from his brow, concern in those doe eyes. “Are you afraid, Torin?” she asked him then.  
“Not for myself,” he admitted at last. “For those I would protect, should I fall.”  
The Hospitaler nodded once, wrapping her arms around him and squeezing him as tightly as she could manage. The Skyclaw’s arms settled around her in turn. “I have faith,” Evangeline told him then. “I have faith that you will not. I have faith that Him-on-Earth will keep you standing in the face of this adversity. I have faith that your brothers and your friends will remain unwavering at your back. You are not alone on Vengeance, Torin Firemane,” she assured him.  
“Thank ye,” the wolf said, the lines in his face easing slightly as he tightened his grasp on her. He held her for a long few moments before speaking again: “Feels like this day lasted a bloody  _week_ ,” the Wolf groused.  
“I’m sorry,” Evangeline said. “I’m sorry it’s been such a trying time for you. Is there anything more I can do? To help?”

He reached up then to unpin her hair, leaving her white-blonde locks to cascade down her back, but he did not strip her beyond that, only touched her cheek.  
“Stay with me,” the Astartes implored, pulling her from the bathroom and back toward his bed.  
“Of course,” Evangeline whispered as he pulled her down atop him, her arms coiled around him. She listened to the beating of his twin hearts, her cheek pressed to his chest, and Torin stroked her unbound locks. “It’s silly, isn’t it?” she wondered a moment later. “To dream of protecting an Assault Marine.”  
He did laugh then, softly, and hugged her more tightly. “As Dorn once said, ‘Ye’re Astartes-built. Ye’ll endure.’”  
“Show me power armor that protects the heart and I’ll believe you,” Evangeline chided him softly. A beat, and the medic glanced up into those blunted features. “If you point at your chestplate, I’ll be very sore with you.”  
“And if I were to remind ye I have a spare?” the Wolf asked.  
“I want both,” the Sororita told him. “Is that greedy of me?”  
“No,” he said, bowing his head to kiss the crown of her hair. “No one ever wants t’settle for half.”  
“Then if I can protect them, I will,” Evangeline said solemnly, kissing his flesh just above one heart.  
“Stay the night, Evangeline,” he asked her again, his grasp almost possessive. “That’s all I need from ye.”  
“I’ll do that for you gladly, Torin Firemane,” she told the Fenrisian, nuzzling at her cheek, and slowly she watched the fear in him recede.


End file.
